Which is Helios, which Agido? But Hagesikhora
Among us is like a stallion among his mares,
The silken quiver of his flanks rounding their eyes,
A horse from a dream and not of this world.
The manes of the haughty Venetian horses
Are like her hair, streaming water combed by the wind.
Her eyes are silver from the time of Tiryns,
And yet all my words are wide of her beauty.
If Agido is a yearling from Kolaxaia,
She is a racer from Ibeno. They are Sirius,
They are the wheeling doves of the Pleiades,
They are the bearers of the holy plow of the goddess
In the half-light of the night-sweet dawn.
There is not insolence enough of purple among us
To back the contending chorus from the altar,
Nor snakes upon our arms, solid gold with godly eyes,
Nor Lydian hats nor gems nor porphyry in our gaze.
Nanno’s hair cannot defend us, nor Areta’s pretty face,
Nor Thylakis or Kleësithera or Ainesimbrota,
Philylla, Wianthemis, Darareta, Astaphis.
None, none shall bring us to our triumph
Unless the lovely Hagesikhora lead the dance.
She leads, she and Agido; their ankles are the dance.
Listen, gods, to their hymn, for none is more beautiful.
Beside their singing my song is an owl’s hoo!
I sing for them as they sing for the goddess,
And all for peace, till all at last is one harmony.
Come, dawn, as to the trumpeting swans of Sparta,
As day finds the Sirens at their song.
Feed us, earth and heart and grace of peace;
Beauty, beauty, like that tossing yellow hair.
IV
1
I do not find Lykaithos
among the dead.
Enarsphoros, Thebros swiftfoot.
The violent, the helmeted.
Euteikhes, king Areion
men, half gods.
2
Eurytos. Tumult.
We shall not pass.
Aisa, Poros: Fate, Luck.
These are older
than the gods.
Brutes stalk unshod.
Wild hearts rush not
upon the gods,
nor upon Aphrodite
amorous [ ]
Queen, daughter
of Porkos. Graces
love-eyed [ ]
from Zeus’ house.
3
4 There is the god’s revenge.
Happy the man of calm mind
who weaves his day
unweeping. But I sing
the light of Agido: I see
her as the sun, which she,
Agido, calls
to shine, its witness.
But I may not
praise or blame her.
Our mastersinger
must come first,
as in a field
the sleek, galloping
stallion,
winner of races,
stands apart,
as if seen in a dream.
5 Do you not see her?
She is a racehorse
of the Venetii.
But the hair of my kinswoman
Hagesikhora is a flower
of unmixed gold.
Her eyes are silver.
Can I describe her?
She is Hagesikhora.
Her beauty is like Agido’s
as a race between
Kolaxaian and Ibenian horses,
as the Pleiades and Sirius
contend in the ambrosia
of the night,
as we contend to bring
the plow to the goddess
in the twilit dawn.
6 For we have not purple
enough to defend ourselves,
nor intricate serpents
all gold,
nor caps of Lydia,
nor violet-eyed glances–
girlhood’s jewelry–
nor shall Nanno’s hair
defend us,
nor Areta goddesslike,
nor Thylakis, nor Kleïsithera,
nor Ainesimbrota to whom we say:
Give us Astaphis,
Let Philylla look this way,
Damareta and lovely Wianthemis.
For Hagesikhora we long.
7 And is not Hagesikhora,
the fine-ankIed, ours?
Does not she keep close to Agido?
She honors the feastday.
Hear them, gods,
gods whose ends they fulfill.
O choirmaster,
I am a mere girl,
I sing like the rafter owl,
yet I sing
to welcome the goddess of the dawn,
the queller of pain,
the Hagesikhora has led us
the lovely way to peace.
8
2. A Hymn to Hera
For a Chorus of Spartan Girls
Where wildly shall I shake my yellow hair
All go limp when they see her walking,
Unstrung as if by sleep or sudden death,
All empty and delicious in their minds.
But rather than give back my gaze,
Astymeloisa with her crown of leaves
Goes by like a fierce white star that flares
The brighter sliding down the sky,
Like the first green gold of a tree in spring,
Like milkweed down on the wind
On long legs striding she walked away,
And in her long wind-tangled virgin hair
The wind-borne grace of Kinyns rode.
But if her geode hand took mine,
How fast would I fall on my knees before her!
The Fragments
3 And Kastor and Polydeukes
The glorious, skilled horsemen,
Tamers of wild stallions.
4 Eating nectar.
5 You and your two horses.
6 Thus was born the blessed
Daughter of Glaukos.
7 A. Sing O Muse, sing high and clear
O polytonal many-voiced Muse,
Make a new song for girls to sing.
B. About the towered temple of Therapne.
C. Waves rolling seaweed to a silent shore.
8 The song I sing
Begins with Zeus.
9 The Muse sang,
The clear-tongued Siren.
10 A. And that man, sprawled in such pleasure, is happy.
B. That man is happy.
11 He was neither a peasant
Nor awkward with fine folk,
Neither born in Thessaly
Nor a shepherd of Erysikhe,
But from Sardis the high.
12 A charming short
Summer dress.
13 Girls scattered helterskelter,
Chickens and hawkshadow.
14 O Father Zeus,
That I had a husband!
15 If I had thought
Of that for us!
16 Just so, our pretty
Little song.
17 Beautifully singing.
18 As many girls as we have,
They all play the zither.
19 She shall play the flute,
We shall sing the song.
20 When I was a woman
Who.
21 I bring with my prayers
This garland of goldflower
And delicious galingale.
22 Not I, O Lady,
O daughter of Zeus.
23 Was it really Apollo
I saw in a dream?
24 May my heart rejoice
In the house of Zeus
And in thine, O lord.
25 Me, O son of Leto,
The leader of your chorus.
26 Long Thrower, son of Zeus,
&n
bsp; Muses in their yellow robes.
27 Leaving Kypros the lovely
And Paphos ringed with waves.
28 That is not Aphrodite in the ginger grass
But randy Eros batting flowers.
Touch not! Touch not! he cries.
29 How many times on the mountain tops,
Streaming torches held high for the gods,
Have you brought the great golden jug
As deep as the churns the shepherds use,
Placed it full of lion’s milk in the cave,
That its curds change to whitest cheese,
[Bacchante! O Bacchante!]
30 Near the holy cliffs,
Near the island of Psyra.
31 Ino, queen of the sea,
Upon whose breasts.
32 Nourished by Ersa,
Daughter of Zeus
And of holy Selana,
The moon.
33 Sister of Eunomia
And of Peitho,
Daughter of Promathea.
34 One roll of the dice
Stirs up the ghosts.
35 My hearth is cold but the day will come
When a rich pot of red bean soup
Is on the table, the kind Alkman loves,
Good peasant cooking, nothing fine.
The first day of autumn, you shall be my guest.
36 Served bean soup, parched wheat,
And late summer honey.
37 Seven tables, seven couches,
Poppy cakes, flaxseed cakes,
Sesame cakes, drinking cups
Of beaten gold.
38 There are three seasons:
Summer and winter,
And autumn is the third,
And spring is the fourth,
When everything flowers
And nobody has enough
To eat.
39 The valleys are asleep and the mountaintops,
The sea cliffs and the mountain streams,
Serpents and lizards born from the black earth,
The forest animals and beeswarms in their hives,
The fish in the salt deep of the violet sea.
And the long-winged birds.
40 Rhipa, mountain flowered with forests
Dark as night in their depths.
41 Artemis! O thou dressed
In wild animal skins.
42 Never shall these old legs dance again,
My honey-throated, high-singing girls!
Had I the wish, well wouldn’t I be
The cock of the blue sea-bird
Who flies forever with his hens
Over the foam-flowered ocean waves?
O careless heart, sea-purple holy bird.
43 Short the way, but pitiless
The need to walk it.
44 Whoever they are,
Neighbors are neighbors.
45 A collar of gold
Studded with florets
Of rich red.
46 I can whistle
Every bird’s song.
47 Boast and brag, such was his fame.
Love You All was his good wife’s name.
48 Eating and singing and the soldiers
Nearby begin a hymn to Apollo.
49 Come dancing, come singing,
Bright-eyed angel of music,
Join us in song, in praise,
Master of the graceful foot,
O Kalliopa, daughter of Zeus.
50 This is the music Alkman made
From partridge dance and partridge song
With his flittering partridge tongue.
ANAKREON
1
2
3
4
And your curls in lovely bunches
All shadowy around your slender neck.
You are now as close-cropped as a calf,
And your hair in ravaged handfuls
Lies scattered in heaps on the black ground.
Poor hair! Laid waste by the snippers.
What grief I suffer to see it there.
And what can anybody do about it now?
5 take pity on
The famous woman imploring her god
In anguish so many times over.
How much better off had I been
If you had thrown me, mother,
Into the tall bright waves
Of the ungiving sea
6 O deerslayer Artemis,
God’s bright-haired daughter,
Packmaster of animals
In the mountain forests,
I ask at your knees
That you come where
The Lethaios tumbles
To keep guard over us
In our city and be
Shepherdess as well
Of settled civil folk.
7 This is the man who faced down
The black shields of the Ialysian guard.
8 Butlers in the infantry
Are disaster in the bud.
9 That good-natured cadet Megistes
For going on ten months now
Has sported the willow garland
And cadged our honied wine.
10 A revolt, O Megistes,
Has toppled holy [Samos].
11 You’ll have me the gossip
all over the neighborhood.
12 The talents that tantalized
Talented Tantalos [tantalize me].
13 Bring me the winebowl, come my boy,
To drink in one long swallow back,
Ten cups of water, five of wine,
And do me proud before its god.
And have done with all this drinking
In loud and drunken Scythian ways.
Drink well and sing fine songs. Drink well,
Sing fine songs to the god of wine.
14 O lord playing with Eros the wrecker,
With blue-eyed mountain girls,
With Aphrodite robed in red
Along the highest ridges of the hills,
To you I go down on my knees.
Come, I beg you, kindly to me,
And make Kleoboulos willing, O Deunysos,
When I tell him that I love him.
15 Here – ha! – is Eros blond as gold
Throwing his red ball at my head
To make me come outside and play
With a charming girl in embroidered shoes
Both well born and from Lesbos too,
And tells me that my hair is white,
And says oh! she loves another.
16 I look with longing at,
I love, I worship Kleoboulos.
17 Boy, because you do not know
You hold the reins that guide my heart,
My look so searching glances off
Your eyes as pretty as a girl’s.
18 I would not wish on
Amalthiê’s horn,
Not for a life lasting
A hundred and fifty years,
Not to be King Arganthonios
Ruling over Tartessos
Where everybody’s happy.
19 In the month of Poseidon,
When the clouds are fat with rain,
Wild storms bring us Zeus.
20 Can myrrh rubbed on a chest
Sweeten the great round heart inside?
21 Targelios marvels at the skill
With which you hurl the discus.
22 And Deunysos shouting
So much, so loud.
23 But O Smerdias
Is three times friskier
Than
24 Because you were
Stubborn with me.
25 You turn in your tracks
When Leukippê [passes by].
26 But he, high-minded,
.
27 Not my gentle sister.
28 I am neither steadfast with
Nor kind to my fellow man.
29 Eurypylê the blonde
Is smitten with the
Litterborne Artemon.
30 I’ve eaten a piece of wheatmeal biscuit
But drunk an amphora of wine,
And now I play a handsome song
On the lute for a handsome boy.
31 I play Lydian octaves
On twenty strings,
While you. O Leukaspis,
Play the fool.
32
Whose heart is green and young again
And dances to a lissome tune on the flute.
33 I climb the white cliff again
To throw myself into the grey sea,
Drunk with love again.
34 The Mysians first mated horsemounting asses
With mares, inventing the halfass mule.
35 To Olympos on easy wings
I got to complain that my boy
Will not do boyish things with me.
36 [Eros] romps around
My grey beard.
His wings flash gold
Hippokleides pays
No attention at all.
37 O the light of your loving smiling friendly face!
38
39
40 The servant girl poured
Honied wine from the jug
On her shoulder.
41 and way back when
The enticing godling Peitho’s eyes
Did not shine so much like money.
42 I come from the river
With bright things in my arms.
43 There, with the beautiful lyre,
That’s Simalos in the choir.
44 I asked Strattis the maker of lyres
To let his hair grow out long.
45 Time was, he wore a tunic from a rummage sale,
A barbarian kind of hat, knucklebones in his ears,
And a cloak that used to be a rawhide shieldcase,
Artemon the pimp who got rich selling the use
Of bakers’ apprentices and teenaged nancy boys,
Often seen in the stocks by his neck, or on the wheel,
Or having the lash applied to his bleeding back,
Or his beard and the hair on his head pulled out,
And now he rides in a mule cart, wears golden earrings,
Says he’s the son of Kylê, and carries an ivory parasol
Like the women .
46 You are kind to strangers, are you not?
I am thirsty. Let me drink.
47 They danced nimbly,
The beautiful-haired
Daughters of God.
48 Now the walls crowning the city
Are destroyed .
49 [He was] neither
From our country
Nor handsome.
50 Ares the raiser of dust
Loves an unyielding fighter.
51 Sweetly singing
Swiftly swerving
Swallow.
52 Baldheaded Alexis
Is courting another wife.
53 And now my hair is thin and white,
Grizzled the lock above my ears.
Youth’s gone, and with it, all delight.
My teeth are going with the years.